After the terrorist attack in Orlando and the murder of MP Jo Cox, candlelight vigils abound. At Salisbury Review, Dalrymple contemplates the meaning behind it all.
What is the message of these candles? What are the people who light them trying to say or express? That they are opposed to massacre or assassination and regret disaster? But does this really have to be expressed? Perhaps they are trying desperately to recapture a belief in the transcendent whose very existence they doubt or, in other circumstances, vehemently deny.
The memorialization of a death by lighting candles has become an established secular tradition though its origins are in the church. This is true for a number of ways in which we commemorate a death. One does not have to be a religious believer to feel it necessary to do so.
I’m afraid I found TD’s attempts to caricature those who light candles and their reasons for doing so rather distasteful.
In response to your “Jo Cox – Candles in the Gale” — How mean spirited you are to impune the motives of people who are clearly in mourning. Was this a day without a topic, where you woke up and just needed to take pen to paper, with nothing really to say. You are like your father. Mean and growing more and more maniacal.